The Kosciuszo Bridge Will Be Blown Up Sunday, and a Lucky Few Will Get to Watch

It’s going down.

The old Kosciuszo Bridge has finally received its death date; Governor Cuomo announced that it’ll be fully demolished Sunday.

The main span of the 77-year-old bridge was carted off on a barge in July, but plans to demolish the rest of it were delayed indefinitely. Now the governor’s office has announced that it’ll come down via “energetic felling” on Sunday at 8 a.m. If you’re capable of getting up that early on a weekend and don’t think the sound of strategically place explosives will mess with your hangover, you can enter a lottery for a chance to be one of the lucky New Yorkers who will get to watch from an official viewing area as the bridge’s two approach spans collapse. Register here by Saturday at 4pm.

The controlled demolition will bring down 20 trusses and 22 million pounds of steel. Once they hit the ground, they’ll be dismantled by heavy machinery and hauled off for recycling, leaving room for the new Kosciuszo’s Brooklyn-bound side to be built. (It’s expected to be completed in 2009.) The Queens-bound side of the new bridge opened in April with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that involved FDR’s Pacard, and has since been lit up with trippy LED shows.

Don’t expect to be able to get up close to the explosions. Gardner Avenue between Meeker Avenue and Cherry Street has been closed, and the following streets are also expected to be temporarily closed for the safety of would-be looky-loos:

• Lombardy Street at Varick Avenue
• Cherry Street at Vandervoort Avenue
• Meeker Avenue at Varick Avenue
• Bridgewater Street at Meeker Avenue